


Commanding Closure

by Toomanynorns



Category: Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toomanynorns/pseuds/Toomanynorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ibmiller asked you: Petra/Dink - no lovey dovey, just an insight into what they were feeling during Command School (and possibly why they were close before?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commanding Closure

It was good at first, to have Dink with her. All the other children seemed so little to Petra now, so young. She wasn't more than two or three years older than most of them, but it made a difference, she realized that now.

But Dink had been with her when she was little. He had always been there, infuriatingly stubborn and curiously down-to-earth in turns.

Their friendship was easy. Dink didn't judge her and in return she didn't challenge too many of his convictions. Even agreed with a lot of them. The teachers, he'd said, they were the enemy, and she had seen his point, brought it to the others. To Ender.

So when they flew to Tactical School, a trip of many long months, she stuck with Dink. He was getting taller now, but so was she - growing bumps on her chest and worrying a little less about the old things and a little more about new things every day.

Petra caught him staring once, at her chest. Because he was Dink, he didn't say anything - didn't mock her for changing just a little bit differently than everybody else. But she caught him staring, and it made her feel self-conscious.

She was still Petra, though. She ignored it. She had more important things to focus on, like studying. She just read a few more books and talked to Dink a little less and eventually, they made it back to equilibrium and it was fine. 

Dink was the first of them who started talking: leaving Battle School had taken away the last of his reservations. He talked about his mother and his father, about his brother Thijs ( _"We might've forgotten our language but we'll never forget our names,"_ he said. " _And sometimes we just like to make it hard on foreigners,"_ he added, a few more names later), about Utrecht and the tiny restaurants he remembered from his youth, built into the wharfs a step away from the canal. It was contagious: soon Petra began to talk as well, and the others followed suit.

Even Bean did. She found herself grudgingly intrigued. Then Bean accused her of betrayal and intrigue became outrage.

She talked to Dink about it, once. He just shrugged his shoulders. "Don't let it get to you," he said.

"That's all I ever do," she snapped.

"Why don't you just act normal, then?" he asked. "You'd be behaving oddly enough."

She'd stormed out. Ignored him for two days straight. Then he showed up at her doorstep and sighed and said, "I'm sorry, Peet, okay? It's just something we say back home. It's old, you can tell, old Dutch stuff always sounds awkward in English. I didn't mean it like that, okay?" 

It didn't work though, that was the thing. Something had changed. Maybe it had already changed on the flight here. She and Dink were talking differently now, and she couldn't tell why - it was as if someone had thrown a switch and now every word got warped, disfigured. But at least they stopped avoiding each other: she hadn't realized how much she had missed that comradery until it had vanished, buried under a pile of anger. Oh, the others liked her well enough, but she had to fight not to be treated like an outsider, or a benign elder. It wasn't the same.

The strangeness never really went away between them, but once they reached Command School, the friendship settled back in like a warm blanket. Petra had her own room, divorced from everybody else, but Dink always found an excuse to stop by and talk with her. She found herself telling him things she hadn't told anyone else about her family, that she missed them, but she couldn't always remember what they looked like, what they did every day.

It worked because around him she didn't need to be angry; but it went wrong more often, too, because when she didn't _need_ to be angry, that meant she could be angered when she wanted to be. The kind of anger you felt when you were actually passionate about the subject, rather than the way other people were talking about that subject to you. It was different, less distant, but its aftermath was also more painful. She was discovering now, here, that there were a lot of things on which they didn't really see eye to eye. What they wanted out of the world. What they wanted to become.

Sometimes Petra wondered if they'd even be friends if it wasn't for Battle School; if she and Dink hadn't originally been bound by being outsiders with attitudes that differed from everyone else's. It seemed more and more obvious now, even when she looked back - people might not have understood Dink's attitude, but there was something about him that they liked, a calmness, no, a desire to shrug off the worst excesses of the crazy around them in order to focus on being, well, normal.  
Petra didn't feel normal. At all. The more she thought about it, the more the gap began to widen.

Then she failed Ender and her heart went to shreds: she forgot about it all and let Dink hug her close while she cried and snottered for hours, knowing he'd never tell anybody, that it wouldn't even dawn on him to. Well, neither would Bean - but Bean would look at her with those distant eyes and take her apart before deciding on a response. Dink didn't do that; Dink just acted on instinct.

It didn't mend anything in the long run. It wasn't the start of some epic love story. Three years later their connection would be reduced to emails and distant jokes; eight years later Dink would visit her and her children at her new husband's compound and poke them in the bellies and criticize her name choices. 


End file.
